WASHINGTON — It’s not just your imagination. The brinkmanship over the debt ceiling really is Washington partisanship at just about the worst it’s ever been.

That’s the consensus from some of Texas’ most seasoned congressmen from both parties, who are watching uneasily as the Aug. 2 deadline looms.

They see the polarization and friction as far worse than anything they ever coped with. And the spirit of compromise is sadly absent at a time when it’s needed most.

“I wish I knew the answer,” said Bill Archer, a Republican from Houston who used to chair the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, which crafts tax law. “I’m not sure there is an answer to it.”

And then he sighed.

About the only reason for optimism — for him and other House veterans — is the knowledge that it takes a crisis and a deadline to focus on big, long-term, politically complex problems.

“We have had situations in the past which worked out pretty well because one side and the other gave a little here, and gave a little there,” said former Speaker Jim Wright, a Fort Worth Democrat. “I don’t believe I have ever seen such an adversarial relationship being cultivated actively by leaders in the Congress — in the House at least — at the expense of trying to come together.”

Spending cuts, revenue

From both parties, the ex-lawmakers’ views on how to tackle the debt problem mirror those of colleagues still in power.

The Republicans prefer to focus on spending cuts. Democrats argue that the revenue side of the ledger shouldn’t be ignored.

But they differ from many current officeholders in their dismay and impatience at the prolonged fight, and the apparent inflexibility on display as the nation flirts with fiscal catastrophe.

“They are so different than even four or five years ago,” said Henry Bonilla, a conservative San Antonio Republican who chaired a subcommittee that controlled billions in spending. He lost his seat in 2006.

“In past years … there was a willingness to compromise and move on, compromise and move on, compromise and move on,” he said. “It’s a new world.”

The hallmarks of that world: a huge influx of freshman House Republicans demanding that federal spending be slashed. They refuse to entertain the idea of raising revenues, even as the White House and its allies insist on that. And their supporters are egging them on.

“There are a lot of people out there that are more worked up than ever. … To them, these new members are heroes,” Bonilla said.

But Democrats, he said, have failed to grasp the public’s demand to cut government.

“You don’t hear people talking at town meetings say, ‘Gee, we sure need to find ways to get more money out of the private sector and peoples’ pockets,’” Bonilla said.

In a ‘real box’

Archer lauds fellow Republicans for seeing the need for major spending cuts, but he’s pretty sure his side has been outmaneuvered and would take more of the blame for a default, just as Newt Gingrich ended up the villain in the 1995 government shutdown.

House freshmen have put themselves in a “real box,” Archer said. Having committed to fight any tax increases, they would face a backlash even nastier than what befell the first President George Bush after he reneged on his “read my lips” no-taxes pledge.

“I cannot say that I am sanguine that they will find a solution,” he said.

Wright, now 88, invoked the 1995 shutdown as a classic example of what can happen when people dig in too rigidly.

“What is important — that the country prevail? Or that I prevail in the next election?” Wright said. “Both sides have to look at that.”

He takes some fellow Democrats to task for their “unwillingness to consider yielding” to demands from the other side. And on the right, he said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a malevolent attitude.”

Democrat Charlie Stenholm, a casualty of the 2003 gerrymandering of Texas, spent 26 years in Congress, leading the conservative Blue Dog bloc. He now co-chairs the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which calls for balanced budgets and changes to entitlement programs.

Like other Democrats, he views higher revenues as essential, given that Bush-era tax cuts fueled much of the debt and that federal revenue as a share of the economy hasn’t been this low in decades.

To him, however, the only long-term way to avert stalemates like this is to overhaul the redistricting process. As long as the only threat most incumbents face comes from a primary fight in a one-party district, extremism will persist.

“There is no compromise,” Stenholm said, adding that the “Republican minority in the House is playing with fire.”

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About Todd J. Gillman

Career track: I started writing for my junior high school newspaper, the Redcoat. In high school, I freelanced a bit for the local weekly,wrote for the school paper and worked on a weekly public access TV news show that was long on enthusiasm and short on production values. During college at Johns Hopkins University, I interned for The Associated Press and later, The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. I started at The Dallas Morning News as an intern after graduating from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government with a master's in public policy, got hired on the Texas & Southwest desk and spent the next several years covering plane crashes, hurricanes and state politics. After a few years as a general assignments reporter on the Metropolitan desk, I moved to the City Hall
beat and later, became the local political writer and columnist. I moved
to the Washington bureau after nearly two years as a Dallas-based national
correspondent.

Most unforgettable experience on the job: Talking my way into Ground
Zero on a rainy day a week or so after Sept. 11, and absorbing the enormity
of it all. My dad used to commute through the Trade Center. A close second
would be my first hurricane, when I was still an intern: driving across
the bridge to Galveston in gales strong enough to push my rental car into
the next lane and tear off the rear license plate, which I keep as a souvenir.

Something people don't know about me: I've been having Tex-Mex withdrawal
ever since moving to Washington.

If I had two spare hours, I would: Go hiking with my wife and kids.

How I define a true Texan: The three natives running around my house
yelling for "mama."

Hometown: Livingston, N.J.

Education: Johns Hopkins University, Harvard's Kennedy School of Government